


Falling Down

by DeadStar



Category: Bourne Legacy (2012)
Genre: Anger, Angst, Blackbriar, Emerald Lake, F/M, LARX, Outcome Program, Swearing, Treadstone, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-14
Updated: 2013-09-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 00:02:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 10,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/842966
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DeadStar/pseuds/DeadStar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How does Aaron Cross cope when the one person he trusted has been forcibly removed from his life? What new direction will his life take him as he stumbles forwards unsure where his next steps will take him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. DEATH AND ALL WHO RIDE HER

**Author's Note:**

> Story has not seen a Beta, all mistakes are mine as well as the OC/OFC's whilst everything else belongs to Robert Ludlum and Universal Pictures.

Marta Shearing was dead.

She had been a wasted opportunity to get his life back on track but now her body lay in a black coroner’s body bag which was on its way to the local morgue where upon arrival her fingerprints would be run and eventually some hack working in the CIA would run the identity results on his computer where a huge assed Treadstone logo would flag up her details and have her identified. 

There, her soulless remains would be shipped back to the States where either the funeral would be a solemn and silent affair with no family members where Treadstone would want her out of the way as quick as possible or eventually and after months of wrangling, her sister would get her body back where she would be buried hopefully somewhere nice, Aaron figured it wouldn’t be the latter for some reason. No, Eric Byer would cover this up and Marta Shearing, Aaron's warrior, would be buried in some cheap assed plot in the middle of nowhere-ville with a plain headstone labelled Jane Doe.

Aaron had become the embodiment of his own surname, Cross, he was cross in fact no, he wasn't cross he fucking livid at himself at becoming so complacent in their surroundings so much so that Marta had become too relaxed whilst he himself afforded a slight reason to maybe be happy in the first time in what felt like a decade. It was stupid mistake to ever feel comfortable in such a place, he knew that Byer had eyes everywhere but Marta's lust for just relaxing for five minutes was so hypnotic that he allowed himself to become slack around her.

The boat in which they had travelled on had pulled into some small port, the boat Captain and his son were pleasant enough but Aaron felt it was time to move on and so had paid for a small room near to the beach overlooking the small dock and with easy access to a road in the rear. It was only supposed to be for a couple of days whilst he got his feet, check the maps and detail the transportation links in and out of the port, two days max for him to scout the area.

He hadn’t remembered the date or how long they had been there but he remembered that it was almost early evening and Marta had mentioned something about popping out to buy them some fruit, she had become addicted to the coconut sellers that would expertly carve a hole in a fresh coconut and jam a straw in there. The liquid inside would starve off the thirst built up in the humidity of the constant hot days and it had been her guilty pleasure once every once in a while to go buy one for herself and one for him.

He had watched her face silently as she had first tasted the fresh coconut milk direct from the fruit and not from some tin can from a supermarket and her face was so full of expression as she wrangled her nose at the taste before pulling one of those warm grins she would offer him every once in a while, it would make him smile too just seeing her enjoy something so basic, it was as close to normal he had ever gotten with Marta Shearing.

The first thing he remembered hearing was screaming, not from Marta but from the locals but that was enough to have him out the doors and down the concrete steps, his head looking to his right where 50 yards up the path a small crowd had gathered looking down at something or someone on the floor. There was a tight knot in the pit of his stomach already, a lump in his throat hat refused to budge and he slowly made his way over to the scene, cautious knowing that soon the local law would be there.

Women stood either with hands over their mouths or shielding their children from gruesome scene that lay out before them. An older man was leaning down over the form, fingers pressed to the side of the neck as he spoke to a younger man at his side, the coconut seller, words came out the latter man's mouth is a hushed but scared string of adjectives, you didnt need to be a detective to know what he was trying to convey.

Marta was looking back up at him, her eyes wide with a weird kind of softness to them but they also looked almost empty like her soul had been switched off and there where her brilliant white T-shirt almost sparkled in the sunlight was a deep, bright red stain that grew with every second that passed. There was a hardened moment where Aaron struggled not to let out a cry of anger but holding onto her dead gaze he started to move backwards as more locals joined the others on the path finally obstructing his view of Marta.

He found it difficult to breathe at that point as left hand clutched at the t-shirt underneath his battered jacket, there was a soft stinging to his eyes as he moved, anyone looking at him would see how pale and ashen his skin had become but nobody was really paying him much attention. People were too busy staring at the prone form on the floor and the chattering become almost surreal as the sounds of whistles could be heard, the local police force were seen forcing their way through the crowds.

Turning his back on her, he moved quickly back to their room and gathered his belongings which didn’t number much pausing to look down on the grey hooded top that she had only minutes before discarded. His mouth was dry and he forced himself to cough, to clear his throat as he zipped the pack up and closed his eyes shut trying to get that image of Marta laying on the pitted tarmac road dead to the world. Forcing his eyes open once more, he felt the odd trickle of sweat roll down between his shoulder blades as he grabbed her grey jacket and dumped in it a nearby bin before gingerly reaching back down to pick it back up again.

It had the soft scent of her still lingering on the soft cotton material, she smelled of Jasmine he had noted before now and as he stared back at the room he had shared with her for what seemed the briefest of moments he pushed the door open carrying her top with him. His anger boiled just beneath the surface as he tried to switch off those emotions, it was always hammered into him back in the Outcome program that emotions would get you killed but with Marta he felt that emotions had started to make him feel more like a human again and not the robot that Outcome had initially wanted. 

Stuffing the grey top into a nearby charity bin, he had to let her go and he had to move because whomever had shot Marta would now be after him and so zipping up his jacket and shouldering his back pack he left the room clean and was out the back door before anyone had time to say anything.

His ears filled with the sounds of the local police sirens pulling up to the scene, people would be talking, they had seen him with Marta and naturally would be putting two and two together. He took in a lung full of air, filling his lungs as his legs moved quickly through back alleys and all the little nooks and crannies that he had taken time to map out the first day they had come ashore. 

Her empty eyes were the first thing he would see when he woke up and the last thing he saw when he dared to close his eyes at night, she would haunt him everywhere he went, Marta Shearing may have died but she wasn't leaving his side any time soon.

Six days later he was closing in on a quiet station to catch some train, heading away from the coast and cross country where he would cross the border but all the while he knew that somebody was following him, the bastard was not going to stop this much Aaron knew. Almost a week since Marta had been taken from him and every day he had been reminded of her presence from something so small to waking in the middle of the night thinking he had heard her calling his name when there was nobody there.

It was coming up to almost midnight when he moved through an almost empty and abandoned building across the train tracks where he spotted his next ride but behind him was a noise, spinning he didn’t see the fist that caught him square in the jaw knocking him backwards and off of his feet.

“Son of a bitch” he muttered, he was seriously off of his game.

“Time to bring you to an end Aaron Cross” a tall male with an American accent slowly pulled out a Sig P229 and brought his arm up, Aaron was in no position to fight off a bullet let along dodge it. If he was being honest with himself, he had all but practically given up after Marta's murder.

He was staring death square in the face and his eyes were unwavering, he knew that this was the asshole that had shot Marta, cold and calculating and everything he had become prior to going on the run from the Outcome initiative. He owed it to Marta to snuff this bastards light out but right now, in this moment in time he had no other option but he wasn't going to give the asshole the satisfaction of begging for his life. The man was laughing in that deep almost menacing way, Aaron slowly stood up a distance away from him, his body relaxed.

“I’m going to enjoy ending you the way I ended her...she never saw me coming, her death was...delightful” the man growled as his gun hand leveled off at Aaron.

A shot rang out and echoed around the empty storage building, Aaron had finally closed his eyes but after the shot had rang out he had cracked one eye open and then the other seeing the man drop to his knees and a second figure casually walk up from behind and place one clear solid shot to the back of the mans head where he fell face first into the rough concrete floor. 

Aaron’s instincts kicked in then, his hand was in the waistband of his jeans and pulling out his weapon whilst the person before him immediately countered his own actions and raised their own hand slightly higher, there was an immediate deadlock.

At his feet was a dead assassin, they had taken the pleasure of killing him so Aaron could not do that, not for himself but for her, for Marta...especially for Marta but there the guy lay as the blood had spattered in small flecks in and around the dead mans head pooling on the concrete like a crimson puddle. He looked his saviour in the eye, they were as cold and as calculating as his own but there was something different, they weren’t entirely icy as the assassins had been.

What to do now? They were both squaring each other up as Aaron took in what he was looking at, black khaki’s, combat boots European issue, charcoal grey tee and a matching dark grey jacket that looked like it had seen better days. What surprised Aaron was his saviour was female and for the briefest of moments he saw Marta standing there with a gun in her hand looking back at him with that knowing look. 

The woman herself wasn't so different to Marta with the dark brown almost black hair up in a ponytail, roughly the same height as himself and athletic not skinny but not fat either and it was evident that there were muscles there but nothing that would make a woman look ugly. And then there was the eyes, those eyes were piercing for him, slate grey and widely looking at him in a way that he couldn’t predict as to whether she was going to shoot him or come onto him, practicality told him it wasnt about to be the latter. 

It was then that the woman before him started to lower her weapon, the Glock’s aim was dropped slowly in her right hand whilst the left hand came out palm outwards, he knew she was about to tell him that she wasnt there to shoot. The advantage then would swing in his direction as he kept his own sidearm very fixedly on her head, the spot between those piercing grey eyes remained steadfast.

“Im not here to shoot you” she said then, Aaron had heard a British accent before, this was quite clearly one of those times.

“Who are you?” Aaron finally broke his silence.


	2. MY NAME IS JASON BOURNE

“Who are you?” Aaron finally broke his silence.

“My name is Kate Jordan, I was sent here to find you” she said as she slowly placed the safety back on her weapon and carefully pushed it into the waistband of her combat trousers in the small of her back before bringing her right hand back to where he could see it.

“Did Byer send you?” Aaron cocked his head to one side infuriated that Byer may of finally found him, judging by the dead assassin on the floor he figured the man wasn't so far behind him now.

“No...a mutual friend...I’m gonna reach into my pocket slowly” she said with her left hand she slid into her inner jacket pocket and pulled out a mobile phone, flipping it open she dialed a number and held the phone for Aaron to take.

“Put it on the floor and back up” Aaron said taking no chances, Kate did as she was told and placed the phone down on the floor at the feet of the assassin and backed up slowly with both hands still in the air.

Aaron slowly moved forwards towards the phone, his gun hand kept a trained lock on her as he bent and picked up the cell, raising it to his ear he heard the other end of the line pick up and a male voice answer. There was an exchange of words as Kate watched Aaron’s face, she surmised at one point that Aaron realised who he was talking to and had looked up at her with a certain understanding passing between them.

She had tracked Aaron for a week solid, he had done quite well covering his tracks and it wasn't until Byer’s own man had slipped up did she pick up any clue as to where Aaron and his Doctor friend were. She had been thirty minutes late getting to where Marta had been gunned down, that was like a lifetime when it came to tracking people who didn’t want to be found especially ones with his skills.

Still, she had caught a break and had was lucky enough to get herself back on track and just under ten minutes behind the very assassin who had been sent to take out Aaron. Her contact had provided her with what intelligence he had managed to obtain, it wasn't much and mostly just stuff he had managed to procure from contacts within the CIA and military sub-divisions, people who had fingers in very sticky honey pots.

Now here she stood face to face with Aaron Cross, he had no idea who she was or what she wanted although the latter part of that thought was about to be answered in a spectacular way as Aaron finished his conversation and flicked the phone closed tossing it back to her.

“Your boss is quite the celebrity” Aaron said as he slowly lowered his weapon.

“He’s not my boss, he’s a friend who asked a favour” she replied as she lowered her hands sensing a change in his demeanor.

“And you just placed your life on the line to hunt me down, take out an assassin in the hope I’m just gonna get on that train with you?” Aaron took a few steps backwards and spied out of the slightly open doorway, the train was getting ready to depart.

“I owe that man my life, he saved my soul, I’m returning the favour” she replied as she started to zip up her jacket, the night air getting chilly.

“We need to get on that train then” Aaron nodded.

The train had seen better days judging from the small, inner compartments, cramped with not much leg room they had opted for a single berth cabin, one could sleep whilst the other remained on the seat opposite watching and waiting for anything.

Sleep would not come well for either of them as they spent a good five hours in total silence, Aaron was still not convinced of having her around for any entirety of the trip but that phone call had changed matters somewhat, the voice on the other end had convinced him for the time being that this was the best offer.

_‘I’ve been watching you for a while now, took me a while to get you tracked down to Manila, you are a hard man to find Kenneth, may I call you Kenneth or do you prefer Aaron now?....'_

"I prefer Aaron"

_'....Aaron it is then, you’ll have to forgive me for not being there in person to meet you, as much as Id like to, my current situation negates any chance of me personally meeting you and shaking your hand, a fellow survivor.'_

"....You’re him aren’t you?.....’"

There was a breath or was that a sigh, either way the person on the other end of the phone had confirmed his identity to Aaron there and then. He remembered the night he had traced his finger of over the mans name in the wooden beam above his bed in the small cabin in the mountains during training.

He had stared at it long and hard, something had registered in his mind when he had saw the name, words and whispers from ghost stories told by old men come and gone. The mans name had chilled many to the bone, to Aaron he was like a beacon, a solitary light shining a path to freedom.

_‘I was alone, Aaron, till I met my Marta, she showed me some clarity from an almost inescapable situation and I owed her my life, she died for me and sometimes I blame myself for allowing her to stay with me so long, I blame myself for seeking her out but for the most part I couldn’t envision my life without her. Maybe it was fortunate for you that you had such a short time together, Marta would never of survived our way of life in the long term.'_

"....She saved my life, I owe her so much....."

_'Revenge is an ugly and all consuming monster that will take over your life Aaron, her memory will one day burn so bright that it cannot be ignored but for now you have to trust me and get on that train with Kate. I trust her with my life, she is invaluable to us all Aaron, she is more like you than you can even possibly imagine. You have a long journey ahead of you both, we will speak again soon’_

It was the end of the phone call, Aaron hadn’t imagined this was how he would have first contact with Jason Bourne but there it was, pure and simple the man had told him that Marta’s death was inevitable and as much as he had considered them being on the lam together for so long, he kind of figured as such that Marta wasn't meant for the life he knew that would unfold and at some point he would be parting company with her but he never had wanted her to leave his side in that grisly fashion, she had deserved more than dying on a street corner like that.

He checked his watch, it was close to two in the morning as he looked across at his fellow cabin passenger as she lay half relaxed back in the train’s well worn upholstered and faded dark red seat with her head laying uncomfortably against the cool glass of the window.

She wasn't asleep, if she was anything like him, sleep was the last thing on her mind but for all intent and purpose she looked like she was blissfully asleep and dreaming. Her arms folded across her chest over the top of the grey partially zipped up jacket whilst her legs were outstretched in front of him.

He studied her face in detail, Bourne had said he trusted her with his life, people don’t say them things lightly and he wondered what it was that had Bourne place his trust in a woman like her. More like him? Was that what was said, did that mean that Kate Jordan was an operative like him from Outcome?

There had been ten operatives training, from Marta he had learnt that most had been taken care of, an unfashionable term for murder but that there were two that were almost certifiably unaccounted for including himself which could mean that this woman before him was the other Outcome operative.

His mind swirled with all the information and conversations he had trying to negotiate the intelligence between the truth and the lie. If she had been Outcome then it meant that she had escaped her forced imprisonment before him, hell they say you are a volunteer but as soon as you sign your name on that dotted line you’re forever their puppet, their prisoner and there was no freedom, not really, no matter how much you spin you tried to put on the situation.

“I can hear the cogs turning from over here” her voice broke his concentration of her face, he hadn’t realised that her eyes were now looking directly into his own, she hadn’t shifted in position but simply looked at him, how long had he not noticed that?


	3. DEMONS

“Who are you really? Treadstone? Blackbriar? Outcome?” he tilted his head and watched her as she slid her legs back up and forced herself back into the chair better, her head had left a small imprint on the condensation hazed glass.

“Neither...I was a mistake, a mistake that needed erasing, i never volunteered for anything” she replied, and there was at least some form of a question of his answered.

“He said...you were like me” Aaron moved his eyes away then from hers and down to the floor only briefly breaking their connection, he had volunteered so where was their so-called connection?

“You’re like me because your government fucked you over in the way they fucked me over. They took a broken person, a person who thinks that their life is wasting away in some doldrum shitty end job and made them something wrong, they took away your spirit, broke it and made you wrong....cold, calculated, fearless....robotic....impersonal....the super soldier of the future. You can’t predict human nature though for she is a fickle beast, you can brainwash your ass away but in the end there is that tiny, little flicker of human emotion and something inside you changes....

...something that screams in your brain to get out whilst you still can and you run cause you know how to do that, you run and you don’t look back” she said, her words falling on him like a truth he had never heard spoken before, his own words, the words that he had held trapped in his own head that he so wanted to explain to Marta but knowing that she would never truly understand what he was telling her or what he was feeling.

Kate was being brutally honest with him, it was more than evident that she had suffered in ways that he thought had only been reserved for him and him alone but here it was laid down bare in front of him and it was such a relief to hear those words from someone other than himself. 

There was that silence once more, Kate slowly rose then to stretch tired muscles that had been locked in the same position for a number of hours now. She had to turn away from Aaron at that point, she didn’t want him to see the look in her eyes right then, she had bared her innermost thoughts and scars right there for all to see, she hadn’t done that in such a long time, not even to Jason when he had asked.

And he had asked, more than once and in his request to help him track down members of the Outcome program he had asked her to connect with the person behind the programming in ways only they could understand. She had failed twice before, she could not make that personal connection, they were memories and emotions she had locked away for such a long time that she had difficulty explaining them to a stranger. As much as Jason had thought that she needed to make that link to get others like them on board she had dismissed him out of hand, had told him that those kinds of thoughts would only get you killed and now she had done exactly what she had promised herself she would not do.

To open yourself like that, stupid, stupid mistake...shaking the thoughts from the front of her mind, she faced the door to the outside corridor, the train rumbled in its rhythmic track as it ferried onwards through the night but its passengers inside remained steadfast and quiet. 

Moving to the door to their cabin she pressed her face up against the small window blocked by a worn piece of curtain, pushing it to one side, she glanced both left and right down the outer corridor and saw nothing. For the most part everything seemed almost too quiet, moving to open the door handle she told him she was going to get some air.

Opening the door and stepping outside, she could almost feel the drop in temperature, whilst the cabin had no internal heating to protect them from the freezing cold temperature outside, body heat had warmed up the small space enough so as not to feel so cold. But once outside the protective bubble of the berth, she could feel the cool air bite at exposed skin forcing her to zip up the jacket all the way and stuff her hands into its quilted pockets. 

Fuck it was cold, its what you get for travelling cheap assed transportation, the no frills train would get them from A to B without too much interference, less people to talk to and less information to share with nosy assed porters and people who had nothing better to do on their train journey than to interfere with the lives of their fellow cabin passengers. 

Stopping in between carriages where the outer doors were, she didn’t need to drop the small window to open, there was enough cool air in between the spaces to take in lung full in. She looked out the window and watched as the darkened landscape passed by at a relative speed for an old locomotive that pulled them onwards through the black night.

She wasn't the only one walking the corridor, a young man probably in the latter half of his twenties and with a typical backpackers look about him opened the interconnecting doors and slid it closed behind him. He nodded a hello in her direction and she reciprocated and watched as he opened the second door before passing through and past their cabin stopping just short of the end of the corridor and opening a cabin door of his own closing it behind him

She looked down at the floor, closing her eyes briefly and replaying in her mind what she had said to Aaron seconds before her eyes snapped back open and looked back down to where the backpacker has disappeared. Backpackers normally wore hiking boots, cheap ones, expensive ones or athletic training shoes and on very rare occasions old army boots. 

Her eyes had looked to his feet after he had passed, those boots were US Marine issue, new by the looks of it, an image of the man in her mind switched from his feet to the style of the jacket he wore. He was trying to blend in but there were certain tell tail signs, the bulge on his left hip for instance, the perfect size for a 9 mm.


	4. HANGING ON

Opening the interconnecting door she heard it automatically click close behind her, opening the door to their cabin she moved for the small backpack she had carried herself and fished out her own sidearm, a Sig Sauer P226. Aaron had grown concerned when he had seen her march back into their cabin all of three minutes after initially leaving it, it hadn’t really given him time to digest what she had told him although her words were hauntingly clear and laid bare in the room and he could identify with everything she had said in that cold manner in which she had said it in.

“Problem?” he asked as he pushed himself up and out of the chair looking down at his own backpack, he had preferred to keep his Glock tucked neatly in the waistband of his jeans for immediate use.

“Possibly...probably” she nodded as she chambered a round and shoved the hand gun into the small of her back, it was a popular choice for those without holsters and hidden under a jacket drew less attention from people who didn’t know to look there.

“How many?” he asked then, grabbing his jacket from the opened bunk bed above his head, it had been opened up for them by a steward who was showing them the cabin hours earlier but neither of them had opted to use it.

“One definite, don’t know if he has company” she nodded as she pulled the pack up over her shoulders and tightened the straps watching him do the same with his own.

“Where?” Aaron asked, she was giving him the right kind of information so far.

“End of the corridor, last berth. Male, late twenties, about six foot with short cropped brown hair. Looks like he has let his Marine issue hair cut grow out a little, green eyes, weapon under the left side of his jacket...wearing US Marine combats boots but posing as backpacker” the information was clear and concise, exactly everything that Aaron himself would of noticed, mannerisms too, he would’ve looked her directly in the eye as he walked past, most people didn’t do that, they’d say hello and then look away almost immediately before carrying on their way.

“I thought only Bourne and yourself knew of our travel plans?” Aaron said then and watched as she looked up to him.

“You had a LARX on your arse, who’s to say he wasn't alone? He could of had support waiting in the wings, if we are lucky its a small three man recon team and nothing more” she replied almost angry at the thought that Cross believed that she could have anything to do with their presence.

“LARX?” Aaron looked at her inquisitively.

“He was an ordinary man at one time but now he’s like the Terminator, I swear if he wasn't fucking human he’d be on this train right now strangling the life out of us.” she said as she approached the door to the cabin and slowly turned the handle.

“Whats the plan?” Aaron asked then shouldering his backpack and moving in close behind her, a quick look around to make sure that there was nothing to connect them to the room and he was following her straight out the cabin door, closing it so very quietly behind him. 

He was already forging escape plans in his mind prior to this, this was him testing her and if Bourne was to be believed, he had to understand how she ticked, how she operated and so for now he would let her take the initiative whilst all the while he himself would be calculating and planning his own escape and evade routes whether they included her or not. 

Cross had learnt he really couldn't truly trust anyone but himself, if he was being truly honest with himself, he hadn't even trusted Marta in the early hours of their forced partnership, he wouldnt of put it past her to bring the enemy to his door for fear of never seeing her family again.

There was no stop, there was at least another three hours before the train was due in at the next station where both of them now figured a team would be waiting for the both of them. They had to either jump from a very fast, moving train or pull an emergency stop but where in Christ was it? 

They could of course take out the team that were waiting for them or an order to take either Aaron or Kate out, either way it was a small and enclosed space to do anything quickly or quietly so getting off the train was their best bet no matter how you looked at it.

“Emergency stop” she looked and whispered back to him as they slipped between carriages, people in cabins could be either heard quietly chatting or moaning in their respective dream states.

Dropping the window of a nearby door, Aaron gingerly stuck his head out to see the landscape before them, they were passing small towns, an hour before they had been passing open fields but it was clear that they were now hitting pockets small population centres, if they were to go sooner rather than later would have been better. 

Closing the window, he looked around for the emergency stop cord, the train had been refitted once by the looks of it and over in the far corner of the passageway he spotted an emergency cord pull, still if it did the job then that’s all that mattered to him. The train retained that old world feel and it was evident that its refit had happened many years ago if the comfort-ability factor of the seats were anything to go by.

She caught his eye as he came to stop beside the emergency pull cord with many signs emblazoned on it, most modern trains would have a button out of reach of tiny hands or worse still, hidden behind a pane of glass to stop tampering from happening but here and now, they had a short cord connected to the emergency braking system in the driver’s cabin. 

Taking another look out of the window on her side, it seemed that his side would be the more favourable, it had shanty type buildings and small alleyways which they could easily lose a chasing force in. She nodded to him as he opened the passenger door in-between carriages and with a deep breath pulled on the emergency cord, instantly the train began to make screeching noises as its wheels fought with the brakes on the train tracks themselves. She felt the lurch forwards as both of them had hold of the small grab rail to steady themselves, Aaron felt her body up against his own fighting the urge of the braking train and looked back at her face.

“Ready?” he asked as she nodded once in acknowledgment.


	5. SILENT MONOTONY

The train was slowing down, they couldn’t leave it too long as Aaron moved closer to the step and could see the embankment come up fast. He had to be careful, the train was still travelling at a speed, whilst much slower than it originally had been, there was still a margin for endangering one self in the process of jumping off of it but jump he did. A tuck and roll later he looked up in time to see Kate jump out the door as well a good hundred yards away from him, a quick visual check told him he hadn’t broken any bones and judging upon how quickly she had gotten up, neither had his mysterious travelling partner

Moving up and over the embankment and down the other side, Kate followed suit and rejoined him as she moved quickly and quietly into the first set of alleyways, it was still dark but some of the small houses had lights emanating from the porches. It reminded him very much of the favelas he had seen on television years ago, people living atop of people and a maze of back streets and alleyways you could take a year to navigate properly unless you were local which meant you knew them all like the back of your hand. 

It made for a perfect place to hide in, they could hear the train had finally come to a halt and there were now many excited voices and shouts coming from the other passengers and the people lived near to the small embankment coming out of their ramshackle houses to see what was going on.

She followed him relentlessly through the maze of alleyways at speed, they were narrow and almost claustrophobic as they moved onwards and upwards along the side of what was an unending hill of small houses all narrowly interspersed with flights of concrete steps and stairs as they meandered up another level and so on. 

Aaron followed one course, they were supposed to be travelling north so that’s the direction in which he continued to travel in all the while very aware of the female behind him who was having no trouble keeping the pace. This should not of been so much of a surprise for him but it was, he had mentally noted that for Marta he had to slow his speed down even though he had tried to maintain an aggressive pace in order to stay one step ahead but still, it was still a lot slower than what he had originally been trained for.

Unlike Marta, who had to stop every once in a while especially if the going got too strenuous, it reminded him that not everybody had super human strength, wasn't built like him for situations just like this, reminded him that he was still human after all as was she. But this one that travelled with him now had no trouble keeping up, every now and again he had half expected her to be trailing behind somewhat but there she was right at his back looking up expectantly at him as he pretended to look down and over her shoulder to see if anyone was following.

He could see the train from where they were stood now, several stewards were out walking the tracks and people were milling around looking at one another, many locals had come from out of their respective houses to see what all the fuss was about and as he scanned the crowds he picked up four individuals who looked out of place. 

They had tried to blend in with all the other western tourists and travellers but had failed in their attempt to blend in, they stood out as far too military for him and as he quickly scanned the area he noted one of them pulling a small paper map out and pointing down at it to his fellow team mates.

So it was a four man recon team, he knew that Byer had probably sent them in and were looking for him and possibly by now would know that he had help. He didn’t entirely trust the woman who had in effect saved his life not five hours previously but he was working from adrenaline and the fact that he knew that people would be hunting him down for a very long time. She had stopped two feet from his back and turned to look back down the steep hill they had just climbed to see what Cross was looking at, you didnt have to be a rocket scientist to know what had piqued his interest.

Aaron watched them for a couple more seconds before leaning his palm out on the side of a building and cast his eyes back up the stone steps they were climbing. Checking the area up ahead, they continued upwards until they were finally out of sight of the train but he knew the recon team would be on their trail if they were as good as he gave them credit for, after all he had initially once been black ops himself, he knew the score.

The favela started to lighten and as buildings became not so enclosed on one another and began to filter out spreading thinner on the ground making concealment a disadvantage but still they both pressed on and out of the town they had landed in. He had wondered whether finding them an empty house but who the hell knew what was empty back there and which had occupants and which had not but in the end there would always be someone who would give the game away with a nod of the head and a few dollars pressed into the palm of the hand.

Money always talked especially in an area like this where poverty was king and anyone with a heartbeat would sell their granny if it meant eating the next day or providing for one's family so sitting tight in the favela whilst a seemingly good idea, it wouldnt be long before the hiding place would of been exposed and exploited. They walked in silence, if he was thinking about possible outcomes then he knew she was probably thinking along the same lines, where to go, how to get there and more importantly how the hell to stay hidden. 

They had both been careful, checked to see if they had been followed, so far they hadn't been but who was to say that could change at any minute. Moving at a pace which after several hours had found them entering the next town over in the early hours of the morning, market traders were already out in their droves setting up stalls, the town was bustling. Aaron could feel the pull in the muscles of his legs, they were calling for him to stop as his pace had been assiduous and now his body was feeling the punishment from the pace.

“We need someplace to lie low” he finally said, breaking the hours of silent monotony.


	6. SLEEP PERCHANCE TO DREAM

It was a flea pit by anyone’s standards which made it the perfect hiding place at least for a few hours, the manager had been paid a few extra to keep him quiet, whether it worked or not, Aaron had to take the chance and so as he scoped the place out and counted the entry and exits and the distance to nearby transportation routes he finally dropped himself down on the only bed in the room. Kate dumped her backpack onto the nearby single battered leather recliner moving straight to the blinds where she turned them down just enough to keep the direct sunlight out but not enough so as she couldn’t see what was going on down in the streets below.

“You should get some sleep, I’ll take first watch” she told him, more of an order than a suggestion but he didn’t care, there would be someone watching his back. If she had any visions of turning him in, that had disappeared not so long ago, she could of done it at any time but she hadn’t, she had watched his back and in return when she took the bed for some rest, he would do the same so for now he rolled onto his right side and closed his eyes.

Kate watched as Aaron fell into a deep slumber, probably the first time in a long time that the man had really slept so deeply like that, she could tell he was dreaming by the way his eyes rolled about under his tightly shut eyelids. Checking her watch, she noted the time and knowing she promised to wake him in four hours had broken her first promise and decided to leave him sleep. 

She had rested enough in her time leading up to finding him so she could go another couple of days before dropping of exhaustion so for now, she glanced over to him and just looked at him, his face mostly at how it would scrunch up and relax as he slept. She had taken to resting in the leather recliner and in the hours whilst he had slept she had been out and bought them bottles of water and some food and had bought some medical supplies to replenish the first aid kit she was carrying. 

Three days before she had gotten into an argument with one of the recon teams that she knew had been hunting Aaron and his doctor friend, suffice to say her supplies had run out tending the knife wound she had sustained in her left shoulder and as such had needed to restock and as the sun began to move overheard signalling the start of the afternoon she had pulled up the hoody over her head and had ventured out gathering what she could get her hands on. She had inspected the wound to her shoulder as he had slept, it was healing nicely as she replaced the small field dressing with surgical tape and gauze to keep it clean.

Still, she smiled at herself, the men in the first recon team had painfully suffered a more tragic fate than her knife wound as she continued her search for Aaron Cross. For now, she had positioned the recliner nearer to the window which overlooked the main alleyway that led to their room. She could see all the way down into main square which tapered off into several other alleyways all of which led down to the market square. It was now near to three in the afternoon and Aaron had slept near on twelve hours, she figured his body needed the extra hours now more than ever, being so hyper vigilant with the civilian doctor in tow must’ve hurt Cross in all the wrong places.

It would be easier for them to travel at night anyway, she had secured a truck ride to the next three towns over by a local farmer transporting his fruit to sell in the city. It may be unconventional but it seemed travelling by train was probably not the way to go for them let alone making it for the airport so she had chosen the next logical step for them both whether he agreed to it or not, her job was getting him to the pre-arranged meeting place in one piece, safe and sound.

Yawning, she rubbed her eyes as she continued to look outside, body relaxed into the side of the wall, elbow leant up on the window sill as she propped her head up with her hand. It was very tempting to just close ones eyes right there and then but it was a nap she could ill afford as she took one of the bottles of water and took a drink from it. Snapping the sports lid closed, her right hand moved back to her sidearm that was resting in her lap, somehow it felt comforting feeling the cold steel in her hand like that, her thumb unconsciously stroking the hammer at the rear.

Aaron was dreaming, dreaming of a life before the program, of a life before special operations, Aaron was dreaming of a non-complicated life for himself where he had grown up as Mister Ordinary in an ordinary job and after a long day of manual labour was returning to his ordinary home and family. But as an ordinary Joe, Aaron knew that there was something missing in his life and he never really felt so fulfilled in his lot and even with the perfect life, wife and kids, Mister Ordinary was an empty existence. 

He had wanted to be a part of something much greater than himself, he wanted to be needed, to be a part of a team that would eventually become his family surrounding himself with people familiar to him in skill and experiences and so as his life as Mister Ordinary with the white picket fenced house slowly dissolved along with his perfect family, reality slowly started to carve away at his dreams until finally he was somewhere else.

Marta’s voice echoed in his brain, he caught glimpses of her in the distance and no matter how hard or fast he ran to catch up with her he never could quite make it and she would slip from between his fingers all of the time. It was damning as he watched her call for him and then would disappear only to reappear dead, laying there on that cold pavement with the blood pooling around her lifeless body and empty eyes staring back up at him. 

Aaron’s mind did its best to blot out that image but he feared it was one image that would never truly leave him for the rest of his life and so as the haze shifted once more, he was back on that train looking at the face of the woman who had saved him from the LARX assassin. He had memorised her face there that evening, the slight wrinkles on her forehead, the way her hair at the sides fell down just past her ears in the slightest of curls when the rest of her hair was practically ramrod straight and pulled up into a tight ponytail. 

He noted the smooth, pale skin had a certain kind of sheen to it and in some respect Kate had reminded him of Marta but only in certain aspects and when she thought he wasn't looking at her or when he caught sight of her at a certain angle, he couldn’t shake Marta from his mind so quickly. He could hear Marta chastising him a little and inwardly it had made him smile if only for the briefest moments until his smile would drop and anger took over, mostly directed at himself for getting her involved because deep down he knew it would never end well for Marta Shearing the longer he had kept her with him.

He reminded himself though that this woman before him, the woman he now travelled with was nothing like Marta, the latter didn’t really have a bad bone in her body, couldn’t use a gun to protect herself really although could wield a motorcycle helmet with some fierceness that couldn't be denied. Could never outrun agents on her back let alone stand face to face in close combat and take them out, no, but Kate had all that in spades and more. 

Shifting his weight slowly in the bed, he slowly opened his eyes to the light glad that the blinds on the window opposite were turned down so as not to create such a harshly lit ambience in the room. He was awake and although his sleep had been troubled somewhat, he did feel enormously rested and a lot better for it and it wasnt until he noted the sun’s position through the shades that he realised that he had been asleep for a lot longer that he bargained for.


	7. TARA

Turning his head to one side, he noted the table where four bottles of water sat along with a brown paper bag, his nose had picked up a scent, the smell of food had permeated around the room and he realised how hungry he had become. Lifting his hand up, he checked the watch on his wrist, almost four in the afternoon, he had been asleep for well over thirteen hours, a good eight hours longer than he had planned for. He wondered what she had been up to in the hours that he had slept, had she done him a good deed by allowing him to catch up on missed sleep or was there something else afoot?

He could see the back of her head from the bed, she had moved the chair somewhere to face the window that looked out at the main alleyway, she was keeping watch and that relieved his nervousness some. Slowly he pushed himself off of the bed and with a crack of the neck, moved towards the back of the recliner, he could see that her eyes had dropped closed but she was breathing lightly. Her ponytail had fallen off to the right side of her shoulder and he could see her bare neck where a tribal tattoo in black ink of what he assumed was a bird of prey with its wings outstretched was inscribed into the skin like an ink drawing. 

There was no real detail just the tribal spirals and curves of medium thick set black lines all interwoven sitting in the middle of her neck, the tattoo was almost hypnotic to look at. He was about to rest a hand on her shoulder but a creak of the floorboard had given him away and a right hand with a gun in it snapped up in his general direction at around ten centimetres from his face, he stared down the barrel of it as Kate moved her head to look at who had come in.

“You should have woken me earlier” Aaron said before watching her drop her arm and relax back.

“You needed the sleep....there’s something for you to eat in the bag” she nodded to the brown paper bag.

Gratefully, he nodded and opened the bag to reveal several soft tortilla wraps filled with grilled chicken and salad, it wasn't a big assed T Bone steak but it was food nonetheless and filled a hole that had been burning in the pit of his stomach. He sat and ate in silence as Kate stood then, moving the chair back to its original position she heard the satisfied mumbles coming from Aaron as he ate with vigour polishing off the two wraps in less time than he probably cared to admit before grabbing and downing the entire contents of one of the water bottles.

“Was the tattoo done before or after you joined your program?” he asked, breaking the silence as she sat down on the end of the bed and looked at him.

“Two years after, I put someone who means a lot to me in grave danger but I had nowhere else to turn. She gave me shelter for three days, it was all I could afford, I couldn't dream of staying any longer even though she had insisted, demanded even and she knew the score but she had done enough for me” Kate looked down at the floor then.

“Sister?” Aaron asked, the one thing he knew he could never risk was putting his family in danger by going to them even if he had any left but surely a mistake that Kate would never contemplate?

“No, not by blood....she’s my hag....long story” Kate had a smile on her lips then from memories past, he may not of understood what she meant but memories of bygone days absent mindedly played on Kate’s mind as she remembered her friendship with Tara.

She had known Tara a few years, the woman had spoken her concerns over her joining the program but Kate had wanted direction in her life, she felt as though her life had been spiraling out of control and that she would of been stuck doing the same crap on a daily basis and had been thrown a lifeline by the department of defence due to her high intelligence quotient factor. She had been just a pen pushing, computer analyst but an internal memo had called for volunteers to try something different, to become something more but it meant cutting people out of your life, cutting yourself off from practically everything and everyone you knew.

Tara had called her mad, to walk into something so blindly with such a ridiculous notion that she would come out the other side something inhuman but no matter how much Tara had protested, Kate had already signed herself up and had joined the Emerald Lake Initiative. She was young, physically fit as much as she assumed she was but it was evident that from the program that she wasn't as fit as she she had hoped she would be but over the course of four years she had been put through the extremes of physical fitness pushing her body further and further until she almost broke.

Lab rats and scientists would see her every two months and poke and prod in a cold manner with virtually little or no human conversation other than for her to answer in a yes or no course. She had longed and craved for some human connection from anyone but had gotten none, she had been injected with some clear looking liquid once every four months until eventually her menstrual cycle had vanished altogether. She had been taken to numerous zones around the world she had thought, arctic, jungle, desert training had taken their toll in the months and years that followed with continuous combat and survival skills until after three years they thought she was ready to learn about how to kill.

All manner of combat styles were learnt and forced to practice and re-practice over and over until she had become a master in everything that they had thrown at her. She had done everything that they had bullied her into doing, interrogation survival, water boarding, hood over the head sat in darkness for days on end with little or nothing to consume. Just when she had thought she could take no more, they had pushed her into a room told to dress and eat the food on the table which she did in silence before two men in crisply pressed suits and carrying file folders had the table and what remained of her dinner taken away.

“Congratulations, you passed, we are sending you on your first mission” one of the suits had said in his deep Texan drawl.

She figured they had done more than just stopped her cycle with all those injections, her body had felt a lot stronger with those regular jabs and then there was a course of red tablets she had been told to take for six months before they had been stopped. Her body was changing, she could feel it, she did indeed feel stronger and whilst the lab rats were encouraged by the physicality of honing what she knew was to be the perfect assassin, her brain felt as though it was about to explode. In four years she had only ever seen the same male doctor and the same male military escort that would drive the the scientist to a location they would send her to every couple of months.

Nobody spoke, she would be given the once over and handed rations, a new pack, a map and told where to head to next and then was left to get on with it and all the time, in all the missions she had been on to get to those points she had never met up with another human being, it was a solitary existence. On her first mission she had gone rogue, the mental breakdown had been huge, to send someone with zero human contact for four years to suddenly throw them back out at the world had a profound effect on her, something the initiative had never considered.

Something Tara had warned her about without even really knowing the true extent of what the Emerald Lake Initiative really was.


End file.
